The 2026 Ginny Padgett Award in Creative Writing
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- The South Carolina Writers Association and The Petigru Review are excited to announce the first annual Ginny Padgett Award in Creative Writing.
- For 2025, submissions for the award will be accepted beginning on April 26th and ending on August 23rd.
- PRIZES FOR THE 2025 GINNY PADGETT AWARD INCLUDE:
- Cash awards of $500, $300, and $200 respectively for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-place entries;
- One-year memberships in the South Carolina Writers Association for the top five entries;
- Publication in The Petrigru Review for the top five entries.
- No fee is required to submit work for the Ginny Padgett Award.
- However, entries are limited to current undergraduate and graduate students at South Carolina colleges and universities. Students must submit their work electronically using a valid email address ending in .edu.
- Submit only original work that has not been published previously. Guidelines are as follows:
- The Ginny Padgett Award welcomes submissions of original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The 2026 issue of TPR will be a themed issue focused on: Things That Go Bump in the Night. Student submissions should also reflect this theme. Pieces need not be set in South Carolina, nor need they be written by South Carolina authors, nor need they focus on things macabre. However, preference will be given to works which engage that thematic element in some way, and genre pieces are welcomed.
- AI tools may not be used to generate the actual text that appears in TPR submissions. If AI-assisted tools (such as dictation software, spellcheck, or grammar check) are used, they must be employed in the same way an author might use a traditional writing aid (such as a dictionary or thesaurus), and not as a substitute for creative writing.
- Prose: please submit only one piece of short fiction or nonfiction. Prose narratives must not exceed 5000 words in length. All prose submissions should be double-spaced.
- Poetry: please submit no more than five poems. All poems MUST be uploaded in a single file. Begin each new poem on a new page and save the entire batch under a single filename.
- Files for all submissions must be uploaded in either a .doc, .docx, or .pdf format.
- No submissions will be accepted via email or snailmail.
- Submissions will be blind-judged. The author's name must not appear on the manuscript(s) in any form. All entries will be numbered upon receipt, and the judges will not know the identities of the authors until after the winning entries have been selected.
- All submissions must include a cover letter not to exceed 250 words. Part of the cover letter should consist a brief biographical note of no more than 100 words to be used on the contributor's page of TPR should the submission be selected among the top five.
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed; however, we must be notified as soon as possible if a submission is accepted elsewhere.
- Upon submission, the author grants TPR first serial rights.
- All inquiries regarding submissions should be directed to Managing Editor Andrew Geyer at ageyer@usca.edu.